Thursday, 23 October 2014

The arguments against Fracking simplified.

This is a guest post by Matt Bryan a local anti- fracking campaigner who took part in a recent debate at the Chester Debating Society on the subject. This was his speech which we consider to be an excellent summary of a complex subject and which we reproduce with Matt's permission:

Good evening, and
thank you to Chester Debating Society for inviting me to propose the motion “Fracking
should be in banned in the UK.”

This evening I
aim to persuade you that Fracking should
indeed be banned in the UK. Let me first
explain first what is Fracking?

Modern high-volume
Hydraulic fracturing, or slickwater fracking, is a NEW technique designed to
recover gas and oil from shale rock. Fracking is the process of drilling down
into the earth before a high-pressure mixture of sand, water and chemicals are
injected into the rock at high pressure which allows the gas to flow out to the
head of the well. The process is carried out vertically and then by drilling
horizontally.

So why are we
considering fracking in the UK? The
Government established the Office
of Unconventional Gas and Oil in December 2012, to develop and promote the
shale gas industry in the UK. Around half of the UK has been opened up and176
Petroleum Exploration Development Licenses granted. A new round of onshore
licensing was commissioned in 2014 leading to this “dash
for gas”

Quantifiable
evidence exists which clearly shows harmful environmental impacts, including
water contamination, air, noise and light pollution, industrialisation of the
countryside and earthquakes. It is
damaging to human and animal health, worsens climate change, uses massive
volumes of water, increases HGV road traffic and reduces property values. It will not reduce the price of gas or
provide local jobs, it isn’t
the answer to our energy security and would be disingenuous to call it a
cleaner fuel as methane is 30 times more potent as a greenhouse gas compared to
carbon dioxide.

Germany, France,
Italy, Spain, Bulgaria and parts of Australia, Canada and the USA have
suspended or banned fracking so why has our Government, despite knowing the
risks, rail-roaded it through against the wishes of the public in a complete
infringement of our democratic rights. No country in the world has proved
fracking can be done safely so why do we still seem to be embracing it?

One of the main
concerns about the process is water contamination, not surprising given that
the British Geological survey shows how many of the shale gas reserves lay
under our aquifers. There are several
ways in which contamination can and does happen - through well failure,
accidents, leaks or spills, either from fracking fluid or from the gas
itself. Fracking fluid contains a
cocktail of proven hazardous chemicals, and the waste water returned to the
surface is a combination of both the water, chemicals, heavy metals and what
the European Union classify as radioactive waste. There will be huge volumes of
waste water which will need to be treated.
There are currently no specialist water treatment plants who could
safely deal with full scale production in the UK and would be too prohibitively
expensive and complicated to remove many of the contaminants. It might be worth noting that while 40-60% of
the fracking fluid is brought back up to the surface the rest remains
underground.

Fracking
companies insist that the risk of water contamination is low, but no level of
risk is acceptable. Water is our most
precious commodity, far more precious than gas and we cannot afford to get it
wrong. You cannot UN-contaminate an
aquifer. We can survive without gas,
but we cannot survive without water. Gas
companies continually deny that fracking has caused water contamination, but
this is simply not true–there
are numerous studies which have shown it has. Fracking company Cuadrilla has
been hauled up by the Advertising Standards Authority for making this false
claim. Six years into a natural gas
boom, Pennsylvania has for the first time, released details of 248 cases in
which companies were found by state regulators to have contaminated private drinking
wells.

Industry accepted
figures on well failure stand at 7% of them failing immediately andSchlumberger,
the world's biggest fracking company, cites failure rates of 60 percent over a
30-year span. All wells will leak eventually.
Industry reports on well failure show that it is impossible to prevent
it happening. Doesn’t
this mean that some water contamination is not just possible, but in fact
inevitable?

Then there is
air, noise and light pollution. During
operations drills and compressor stations operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
with floodlighting required at night.
Compressors are the equivalent in noise production to jumbo jets taking
off continuously and there will be around 50 HGV visits per site per day.
Emissions from drilling pads, compressors stations, HGVs and other related
equipment can lead to a gas field haze with high levels of ozone and airborne
toxic chemicals.

Gas companies
cannot keep denying that fracking affects human and animal health –there
is overwhelming evidence from the US and Australia that it does. As this
unconventional extraction method has pushed into more densely populated areas
of the States, numerous studies such as the one by Bamberger and Oswald, have
begun to show that living near a well is extremely detrimental to human and
animal health. Clusters of ill health
have been found around fracking sites including chronic, acute and even fatal
conditions –from
nosebleeds, neurological disorders and breathing problems. Breast Cancer UK
have called for an immediate moratorium. Given that the UK is considerably more
densely populated than either the US or Australia, the health impacts will
surely be far more pronounced. Won’t
this put undue pressure on our already struggling National Health Service?
These were views echoed by a report made by the British Medical Journal. In
parts of Australia they have declared that drilling should not be undertaken
within a mile of a property, but in England this would be virtually impossible
if full-scale production were to take place.

Unlike
conventional gas exploration, fracking shale requires a huge number of wells to
make it commercially viable and would see the British countryside littered with
thousands of rigs, supported by connecting pipelines, compressors and service
roads. If the energy companies undertaking unconventional gas extraction are
accurate and truthful in their claims to investors and they delivered the
quantities of gas they promise it would mean that the UK would be covered in
around 25,000 rigs. The Advertising Standards Authority upheld a claim against
Cuadrilla for its misleading suggestion that there were no material differences
between fracking in one of it’s conventional wells
and fracking for shale gas.

Shale gas
production is known to be very water intensive. Estimates for the volume of
water required from start to finish of the fracking operation vary
significantly due to lack of reliable data and differences in depth and geology
of shale plays. According to the recent Tyndall Centre report “the
entire multi-stage fracturing operation for a single well requires around 2.5
million –8
million gallons of water”this
would include 1000 - 2500 tonnes of chemicals per well, per frack. According to
the Environment “there
are considerable pressures on water resources throughout England and Wales”.

Earthquakes –There
are vast amounts of evidence that fracking and industry related injection wells
cause earthquakes. In fact the first frack in the UK, which took place in
Lancashire in 2011, caused two earthquakes magnitude 2.4. According to Scientific American there have
been over 230 fracking induced earthquakes measuring over 3 on the Richter
scale in Ohio this year alone and 2500 since 2008.According
to the British Geological Survey Britain has a more complex and fractured
geology, unlike any of the shale plays in the USA. Professor Mike Stephenson of
the BGS said that to minimise earthquake risk, it is “really
very, very important…when
you decide that you want to hydraulically fracture…to
make sure there are no faults in the area”.
Blackpool- home to the UK’s
only fracked shale gas well - is known to be faulted.

Is shale gas the
answer to our energy security or supply?
This is highly unlikely. Risk of
uncertainty in the international gas markets driven by the shale boom, as
highlighted with the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies’
assessment that there are limited prospects for shale gas in the UK or Europe,
call into question arguments that shale gas can enhance UK security of supply. Even if it could it would only be a short
term solution and we wouldn’t
reach full-scale production for 15 years–long
after the point at which we will need to have found a solution to our energy
crisis.

Promotion of the
shale gas industry I believe, detracts from what we should be doing in terms of
energy conservation and renewables.
Surely that is the real answer to our energy security. And since we can only use less than ½of
all known fossil fuels whilst still retaining a liveable planet, we need to be
reducing our dependence on gas not fuelling our dependence to it, diverting our
attention instead to improving renewable technology for a long-term sustainable
solution.

Lower energy
price claims have been refuted by every major financial institution in the
world. There are estimates that finding and development costs in Europe are in
the region of 2–3
times higher than the US. The UK has a population density which is eight times
that of the US and limited land availability, which combined with the
differences described above, indicate that domestic shale gas is unlikely to be
able to compete with imports in the future.

It is claimed
that the industry will bring with it local jobs, but this is highly unlikely.
The Oxford Institute for Energy Study points out that there is “currently
close to no fracking expertise nor manufacturing capacity in Europe”...meaning
that they will need to rely on international service providers. In other words, any shale gas production in
the UK would rely on importing both labour and equipment from overseas,
probably the US, given its position as market leader. Any local jobs would be unskilled and
temporary. In fact it is likely that the industry would be the cause of jobs
losses in sectors such as agriculture, tourism and the brewing industry. This is in stark contrast with the potential
economic and job creation benefits, which low-carbon technologies such as
marine renewables could bring to the UK as highlighted by the Committee on
Climate Change (CCC) in its Building a Low Carbon Economy report.

The Government
acknowledges that there have been problems with fracking in the US and
Australia but insist that it won’t
be like that here because we have gold standard regulations. However a report by the Chartered Institute
for Environmental Health found both the European Union and the United Nations
Environment Programme have concluded that fracking may result in unavoidable
environmental and health impacts even if the gas is extracted properly, and
more so if done inadequately. They suggest that even if risk can be reduced
theoretically, in practice many accidents from leaky or malfunctioning
equipment and bad practices occur regularly.

When profit is at
stake corners will always be cut and rules flouted. However, not only can this
industry not be sufficiently regulated, but having myself listened to
presentations by representatives from the Department of Energy and Climate
Change, the Environment Agency and the Health and Safety Executive, I can
assure you that our regulatory system is not even close to gold standard and
goes nowhere near protecting our communities.
It is my belief that Fracking cannot be carried out safely and Cuadrilla
have been in trouble again with the Advertising Standards Authority for falsely
claiming that they use proven safe technologies. There is no such thing as proven safe
fracking technology.

The EU study
found cumulative overall risk to the environment and health from releases to
air and from traffic associated with fracking operations to be high. The UK is
already facing potential legal proceedings from the EU as a result of its
failure to improve air quality as at least 29,000 UK deaths are caused by air
pollution each year. Fracking is likely to exacerbate this problem.

If we are able to
extract all the shale UK reserves, and this remains doubtful, Gas companies and
their share holders would stand to do well, as would the Government initially
through tax revenue, but at what cost?
Is money more important than our environment, our water, our air and our
health?

So my view is
that Fracking should without question be banned in the UK. I look forward to listening to the opposition
debate and will be happy to answer any questions after her submission.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I have established through
referenced research, the following points:

Our ‘dash for gas’ will
increase and bind us to our reliance on fossil fuels and will redirect our
attention and investment from alternative energy sources.

House prices would fall as a result of
production in the area

Seismic activity would increase

Well failure is an industry accepted eventuality
and will lead to water contamination

The UK is simply too densely population for this
industry to operate safely

Water supply for the industry is a major issue
and aquifer contamination and climate change issues will leave us more open to
water shortages and drought.

Fracking is an industry that is fuelled by
powerful corporate interests influencing political agenda

Massive industrialisation of our countryside
would be. Increased HGV traffic, noise, light and air pollution would be of
major concern

Associated risks to residents, workers and
livestock pose a huge threat to health and well being. Burdens to the NHS have
been noted.

Job promises have been grossly exaggerated and
would probably lead to job losses in other areas. Job creation in the
low-carbon sector outweigh the fossil fuel sector.

These are the reasons why I propose that ‘fracking should not be allowed in
the UK’

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